We appreciate the enormous support that our ABestWeb community has experienced over the many years it has served its members and sponsors. We have decided to exit this business and have placed the property up for sale and we are actively entertaining interest.

In the meantime, community members will be able to read but not post to ABestWeb beginning on Jan. 18.

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I charge more for "being on call" because it is a pain in the butt... I charge enough to discourage my client bothering when I what to be left along... otherwise I would be bothered everytime my client got a hangnail...

for me it is worth it because it builds loyality

I run my online business the same way I run my brick and mortor business.. because they are my how I pay my bills.... I treat them both like a business...

most onliners fail to treat there on line business like a business.. if you are trying to make money...
it is either a "job" for a "business" you decide and then treat it a such!

What is being on call? Does this mean you are available 24/7 or do they want you to drop what you are doing and update their site before your other clients? If you are a freelancer maybe they just want to be sure you will be around at all to update their site.

I can't imagine why a web designer would need to be "on-call" at all. 99.9% of web problems I've experienced were server problems that the web designer (me) wouldn't be able to do a thing about. If your client needs to have someone he can call in the middle of the night because he wakes up with a new color scheme in mind, then make them pay through the nose for the privilege.

On the CAD side of my freelance work, my builder clients sometimes will call with rush jobs that they know I'll do because our history shows they don't abuse it. (They know how fast I can work under pressure and how slow I can work when being conned.) The occasional all-nighter gets billed at the normal rate.

It really depends whether you want to ENCOURAGE or DISCOURAGE the "on call" work.

If you want to encourage it, set any rates at reasonable levels--somewhat higher than your current rates.

If you want to discourage it, set the rates and terms high enough that you'll still be happy when/if they do need you.

I did this several years ago when I left the corporate world. I knew if I didn't set some expectations, I would be hammered with lots of little calls. I wanted to dedicate as much time to my online business as possible. I let my former employer know that I was available for consulting for a maximum of 4 hours per day at a rate of $250 per hour with a one hour minimum. I think they ended up needing me for 13 hours, and at that rate I was more than happy to help.